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February 28, 2021

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Pike compellingly cruel in toxic thriller

An air of mystery surrounded Rosamund Pike in “Gone Girl” but there’s no mistaking her in “I Care a Lot.” Sporting designer suits and a bob cut so sharp that you tremble for her stylist, Pike’s Marla Grayson is imperious from head to toe.

The title of J Blakeson’s sleekly sinister neo-noir is tongue and cheek. Marla, a shark on par with Gordon Gekko or Jaws, doesn’t care even a little. She’s a legal guardian to dozens of elderly people whom she bilks for everything they’re worth. “Playing fair is a joke invented by rich people to keep the rest of us poor,” she says in the movie’s opening.

When so much real terror is stalking nursing homes, the timing of “I Care a Lot” is perhaps not ideal. Marla’s scheme is a loathsome one and the feeling of disgust only grows as writer-director Blakeson depicts an interwoven system of elder abuse, with doctors and nursing home mangers all taking a cut. One of them hands Marla a “cherry” — an especially desirable new ward because she’s both wealthy and lacking any apparent living family that might interfere — in Jennifer (Dianne Wiest). A few falsified health records and a judge’s rubber stamp later, Jennifer is abruptly hauled off to a facility where her phone is taken and Marla and her partner-girlfriend (Eiza González) quickly start auctioning off her stuff.

Having Dianne Wiest locked up is no less infuriating than Jack Nicholson being strapped into a mental hospital. But the twists and turns of “I Care a Lot” lead elsewhere — in more comic, off-balanced but deviously delightful directions.

Jennifer turns out to be not just a meek old lady living alone but the mother of a powerful and well-financed underworld figure with ties to the Russian mafia Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage). Dinklage immediately recalibrates the movie, as Roman summons his forces while he snacks on an eclair or sips a smoothie — to free his mother. It also rebalances our allegiance.

Blakeson’s film is gleefully amoral, less concerned with judging its obviously heinous characters than crafting a satire of American capitalism as a system where human trafficking is a mode of business.

“I Care a Lot” has ultimately no way of resolving its fairly ludicrous plot. But it’s strong, gripping, unpredictable pulp, and Pike pulls something off that few else could as a protagonist. She’s quite detestable and completely compelling.




 

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